SALLY SARA: David Taylor joins me now for our look at today's business and finance.

David, one of the world's biggest miners has just delivered some results to the market.

What can you tell us?

DAVID TAYLOR: Well, Sally, this is one of those classic business stories where on the surface, it doesn't look like a particularly sexy story, but it does actually have some legs.

Now, Rio Tinto is obviously one of the biggest miners in the world, and it's delivered its fourth quarter production update.

Now it's basically in line with expectations, but that said, the amount of iron ore that Rio Tinto produced in the fourth quarter, in conjunction with Hancock Prospecting, was quite extraordinary - it was a record 253 million tonnes, and a lot of that was achieved in the last three months of the year.

Now, there was a little bit of hesitation over whether they would achieve what they wanted to achieve, and they did, but it really was down to the eleventh hour.

Now in addition to that, they delivered their results for aluminium as well and copper.

So to cut a really long story short, in terms of iron ore, they basically met expectations - perhaps just slightly below what the market was expecting.

In terms of aluminium, they produced more than was expected.

In terms of copper, that was roughly in line.

But the market wanted more, and that's the trick of this.

Even though there's record production, the market was hoping for a little bit more.

So Rio Tinto shares actually fell on the news nine cents to $65.90. In addition to that, they've basically indicated the markets are still very volatile.

Coal prices are falling, and that's hurting the company - of course, higher costs and the Australian dollar are also hurting.

SALLY SARA: And David, just a short time ago we heard that the retailer Billabong is back in the headlines. Has the share price continued to climb?

DAVID TAYLOR: It has, and obviously as Sue Lannin mentioned earlier, there could be the potential for a bidding war and the possibility that VF Corporation that owns Timberland and North Face, they may break up the company when they finally get hold of it - if they finally get hold of it.

Look, the result - its share price closed 16 per cent higher to 98 cents, so not obviously at that $1.10 price, but shares kept surging.

SALLY SARA: And David, what influenced the share market today?

DAVID TAYLOR: Look it was another tepid session on the market, but it ended up closing down two points - that's pretty flat - to 4,742.

Telstra was one of the biggest losers of the day, down 1.3 per cent to $4.43.

The Australian dollar has closed the Asian session at 105.4 US cents.

SALLY SARA: You almost scared us there. David Taylor, thank you very much for that.